


Wrapped in Skin

by Glitchedwings



Series: Short and Sweet [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel, Gen, Mentions of April/Castiel, Newly Human Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 03:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15676776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitchedwings/pseuds/Glitchedwings
Summary: Castiel has learned much about the human body in the past few weeks.





	Wrapped in Skin

Castiel has learned much about the human body in the past few weeks.

He runs hands under the blanket and down bare chest, feeling the different muscles, pressing down to feel their outlines. After the solid pattern of rib cage, he pushes into the skin, along the hard division between bone and internal organs. He can trace a finger along where the rib cage ends, and it fascinates him. Over and over, he traces that line, pushing in, seeing if he can grip under the bone, though he knows he can't without harm. Slight pain tells him when the skin can stretch no further; he stops. The upside-down U of an upper torso gives way to a different plane of soft stomach (how far in he can press, without pain!), then to hips, which he travels with a finger, noticing every curve. That kneecaps can be moved slightly by hand is a discovery, distracting him for several minutes as he wiggles one back and forth. His next instinct is to trail four fingers from tendon to ankle, but he's already stretched far enough forward that the blankets have rutched up; they expose April, at his side, to the cold, so he lays back down and smooths them out, to re-cover their shoulders.

All of this, under skin, he marvels. Bundled up as if under a malleable rubber top coat. Stretchable, pliable, elastic; and yet, as he knows, resilient.

When he first came to Earth in a vessel, Castiel was surprised at how... warm an experience it was. Like living in constricting layers upon layers. Perhaps, he thinks, like a small child being dressed for the snow. He huffs a quiet laugh. How absurd, but, in retrospect, accurate.

Sex is warm, too, in a different way.

During his first instance on Earth he had almost expected vessels to be dry and dusty, or cold like clay. He had watched them be made, after all. And he had been partially right: vessels, while warm, were dull in a disconnected way— like a cocoon of dead skin. But human bodies were not. Vessels were vessels, but bodies were something different altogether.

 _This is what humans mean when they say life_ , he thinks distractedly, half-asleep. _What they really mean._ This collaboration of blood and bone and muscle, pulsing, warm and electric. Like a chick that you can cup in your hands, its heartbeat pounding heavy and its toes gripping your skin. A home for a soul.

Sacred in a way his siblings, still angels, cannot fully understand.

He thinks of Anna, and wishes they could share in this revelation, drink and laugh about it. She had known, and she had been willing to purl herself apart for a bid at humanity. He is beginning to see that she might have been right. Maybe it was not such a bad price to pay, for something so magnificent as human life.

From the rafters to the barnyard floor, and yet, somehow it was magnificent. The fall, that guilt— he pushes it away for now. So long he has stared from above, has been in part responsible for the big picture, and he releases that responsibility. This is his time to live on a small level, to curl in on himself and rest. He breathes.

With angelic orders, there was never time or desire to explore this creation himself, only watch and influence. He was a pillar of stone, watching the tides change, or rushing unbreakably at an enemy. Now, as human as he can get, Cas again runs hands over his body's skin and marvels. _His_ skin. _His_ hands. Over collarbones like protruding rocks,—his collarbones—stretching his hand around his chest to rest on his opposite shoulder. A sea of organs and muscle, blood— his. Jimmy is long gone, and this is only Jimmy's visage now. It is Castiel's remade body. His, his, his. His home.

His palms, one on his shoulder and one on his stomach, radiate heat like little stars. He stares at the ceiling through darkness and relishes the warmth of this bed and these bodies.

Soon, he will feel betrayal. Soon, he will leave this existence he is appreciating ( _Human death, it always follows human life. I forgot that part_ , he thinks nonsensically as April stabs him.) He will die. Soon, he will be resurrected and lied to and cast out; he will work and struggle and learn. He will babysit; he will kill. Soon he will be tortured, and soon he will shrug off his newfound humanity like a coat, he will violently stumble back up to the angelic plane. Sometime soon, he will be swept back into cosmic storylines, his time as a human body just a speck in his long existence as an angel.

But for now, unaware, he simply basks in the feeling of being warm and alive. For now, he sleeps.


End file.
